President Donald Trump's former national security advisor Michael Flynn has been charged with making false statements to the FBI over possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during last year's US presidential polls.

Former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Robert Mueller, who is investigating allegations of Russian interference in last year's US presidential elections as a Special Counsel, today announced that Flynn was charged with "wilfully and knowingly" making "false, fictitious and fraudulent statements" to the FBI about his conversations with Russia's ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak.

As per the charge sheet, Flynn lied when he told investigators that he did not ask Kislyak to "refrain from escalating the situation" in response to sanctions that then- president Barack Obama had imposed on Russia, and that he did not ask the ambassador to either delay or defeat a related UN Security Council vote.

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